ITWire: "Linux users can, at times, be the worst kind of ingrates, whining and complaining about what they perceive as missing features in a free operating system. My advice to all such whingers: spend 10 days using the latest version of Windows and you'll realise that you are living in a world of relative bliss."

You mean it's finally posible to remove entries from gnome menu by right-clicking it and choosing "remove" in this super-consistent UI?

How would being able to remove menu entries by right-clicking on them make Gnome more consistent? Sure, I'd like that feature, but not having it doesn't make it inconsistent. There is a GUI for doing this BTW.

Or it's finally possible to change the window titlebar size without messing with gtkrc files?

Yes, yes there is. How does one do this in Windows?

And as for those screen shots (neither of them attractive); at least the Gnome desktop look can be changed easily. What do you have to buy (or hack) to theme Vista?

The fact that there is no readily available way of doing this shows that all the usability studies conducted by ms probably indicated that people couldn't care about how many pixels high their title bars are.

This is the problem with linux (and oss in general). Look at the preference windows for example in seamonkey, miranda, or gaim and compare them to pidgin. pigdin is more concernced with giving the options users actually need and not what developers think would impress other developers. There so blinded by details that they forget to look at the software as a whole.

I know someone who uses a computer everyday and one day said she's seen everything there is to see on the internet. I asked her what she meant... it turned out the internet to her was the aol news channel that opens when the aol software is started. She had no comprehension of what the internet is. She had two avs running, about 50 things running in the system tray, four office suits (all installed by well meaning friends trying to convince her that ms is evil), and several browsers.

She still uses word to this day and had no idea that there were other word processors, nor why the computer slowed down (the two avs). Its people like this that ms have to also cater for, which is why you won't and shouldn't find options in windows to adjust the pixel spacing between the close window button an the minimise button.

This is the problem with linux (and oss in general). Look at the preference windows for example in seamonkey, miranda, or gaim and compare them to pidgin. pigdin is more concernced with giving the options users actually need and not what developers think would impress other developers

Of course, you do understand that Pidgin is Open Source, and that it is the latest incarnation of GAIM ???????